Supreme Court to Decide If Gun Transferring Is a Crime

The Supreme Court will consider a new notion in gun carrying laws by deciding if purchasing a gun for others can be considered a crime.

In the United States, purchasing guns varies depending on a state's jurisdiction; however, the prerequisite in buying a concealed weapon legally is to have a background check to clear the purchase legally.

The main question that the Supreme Court will be deciding on is if it is a crime to purchase a gun for another person, even if both parties are legally entitled to carry a gun.

The decision to question this notion retortes back to a case in 2009. Former police officer Brian Abramski Jr. faced indictment charges for purchasing a Glock 19 handgun for his uncle in Virginia. Abramski purchased the gun with a special discount rate under his name, but then transferred it over to his uncle.

This lead to Abramski to be indicted in federal law for lying about the purchase, and "for making a false statement with respect to information required to be kept in the records of a license firearm dealer," reports Fox News.

Abramski and his defense team argued that there was no criminal activity in this case because both parties were entitled to carry a weapon legally, and his uncle had even passed a background check before. Abramski claimed that he only purchased the gun under his name for the discount rate he received as a law enforcement official.

In an interview with Gregg Jarrett on Happening Now, Dwane Cates from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, found no criminal activity in the case. "The law morphed over time. Does that mean that if I buy a gun at a gun store I can never sell that gun to anybody?" questioned Cates. "All this man was doing was trying to use his police discount to get his uncle a gun at a discount [and] he even made his uncle pass a background check before he got the gun."

This process of background checks is to avoid any convicted murders or mentally unstable individuals with psychological disorders, from purchasing or carrying guns. Purchasing guns legally grants citizens of the United States the right to bear arms unless previous cases have deemed them unfit for a gun.

While there is no immediate crime objectively in purchasing a gun legally for another, the "sly towards anarchy" is the main problem with the ongoing case according to Deputy District Attorney Wendy Patrick. Lying on the form in purchasing the gun and falsifying information is the root of the problem that the Supreme Court will investigate. The criminal activity may be found in the false statements made in purchasing the gun.

"....The government argued that [Abramski] violated the plain language of the law, when he said on the form that the gun was for him," reads the Fox News report. "They argued he never gave the seller any idea that he planned to essentially resell the gun to someone else the dealer would have no opportunity to vet."

A decision by the Supreme Court is expected to be made by June of this year.